BOB KORNEGAY: A mountain vision of life

He smelled like aromatic tobacco burned in the bowl of an old briar pipe. Prince Albert, maybe, or Sir Walter Raleigh. No fancy-flavored Cavendish for him.

He carried his tobacco in a flip-top tin, in the pocket of a ragged denim jumper. His overalls were faded and he wore the galloused bib loosely, better for reaching inside to warm a chilled hand or scratch an itch. The felt fedora on his head was sweat stained, creased, and a witness to better days. His brogans were cracked and thin, but comfortable.

He was old. Thinning wisps of white hair spilled from beneath his hat and down over his ears. Thick veins roadmapped his arms and the backs of his weathered hands. The skin on his neck was creased and lined in a latticework pattern etched by years of summer sunshine and stiff mountain winds. The eyes were watery, but not dull.

And they, the eyes, were still blue and still twinkled whenever he picked up the gun. When he did this, even a trace of the old spring-step returned as he strode purposefully from the cabin porch, across the swept-bare front yard, and into the cove forest that bordered his Southern Appalachian homeplace.

A handful of No. 6 paper-hulled shotgun shells rattled in his pocket, ringing dully against the tobacco tin with every step. He paused briefly to transfer them to another pocket, where they would rattle more softly.

The shotgun rested on his shoulder. It was a 12-gauge; the kind I heard called a “long tom” in my youth. Break-open-breech-loading, hammer-cocking. Simple. An old friend. The hardwood stock was pitted and scratched. The barrel was meticulously oiled and religiously cared for, inside and out. It was a good gun, the gun of a simple man. The game it had tabled through the years was uncountable. With it, he had once even killed a bear, though that quarry had not died easily and, save for the heroics of two crossbred Plott hounds, might have ended his life prematurely.

In the woods, he kept to the creek bank, avoiding the steep inclines. Eighty years take a toll on a fella, he thought. Soon, he needed rest and gingerly seated himself upon a flat-topped granite boulder at streamside.

Hunter’s instinct and 70-plus years of self-taught woodsmanship ensured a quiet, rapt concentration as he sat watching the trees for signs of movement. The tail-flick of the gray squirrel in a hemlock 30 yards downstream did not go unnoticed. It died cleanly, falling heavily into the forest litter. The old man smiled. He loved the old gun’s familiar kick and the smell of spent powder.

He was gone but two hours that morning. Like countless times before, he watched the woods wake up to a mountain sunrise. Late-fall bird life burgeoned in misty, sun-dappled clearings. A woodchuck waddled clumsily across his path. He even caught a brief glimpse of a mink slinking along the creek bank, a small rainbow trout clenched in its jaws. Three more times the long tom barked and three more squirrels were added to the game bag. He always stopped with four these days. Cleaning the little buggers gets tedious now.

Back home. Tired. But never too weary to dress his kill, or to lovingly oil and wipe down the barrel of the old smoothbore and stand it carefully in the corner within easy reach.

Stretching and yawning, the old man stirred the fireplace embers and added three new split logs before settling into his cushioned rocking chair. He sipped from a steaming cup of boiled coffee and, in semi-doze, reflected on past hunts and hunts to come.

“Long as I can,” he whispered. “Long as I can.”

The old man lies buried here, in the dooryard of the old homeplace, gone now save the foundation stones and an odd log or two. His headstone still stands, though time and elements have obliterated any trace of hand-chiseled identification. I do not know his name. I never met him. I am unsure of when he lived or died. I know only in my heart of hearts that he would not mind my being here, watching his birds, hunting his squirrels, loving his mountains, and, accurate or not, telling his story.

No, I do not know him.

Or do I? Sometimes I feel stories inspired by old gravestones are more than imagination.

Email outdoors columnist Bob Kornegay at [email protected].